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Indeed. vi is a tool in the toolbox. EMACS is a whole toolbox. Prefer to compose my tools now hence vi as well. As you say it's always there which is critical when something is broken, which is where I usually have to turn up on the scene 🙄
 
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There's sure to be countless opinions on this matter, but my preference is TextMate:


OK, I know this post is over 7 months old, but how are you able to keep TextMate working on current versions of OS X? For me TextMate has been mostly unusable for a couple of years now due to conflicts with the OS making it super slow.

Late last year I finally came to terms that TextMate wasn't coming back and I had to find a new favorite text editor. So far I'm leaning toward SublimeText though I hear from longtime users that it's going the way of TextMate so I'm hesitating to go all in on it.
 
Sunsetting Atom "Atom and all repositories under Atom will be archived on December 15, 2022" https://github.blog/2022-06-08-sunsetting-atom/

I've continued using Atom since it meets my needs, but this morning it crashed when opening a file. There was also a MacOS alert I've never seen before, saying it could damage my computer and it should be moved to the trash. Remembering this thread, I went to the link in the post above and found this. I downloaded an old version and am back up and running. But I suppose it's time to have a look at some of the alternatives suggested here. :)
___________________________

"January 30, 2023 Update:
...On December 7, 2022, GitHub detected unauthorized access to a set of repositories used in the planning and development of Atom. After a thorough investigation, we have concluded there was no risk to GitHub.com services as a result of this unauthorized access.

A set of encrypted code signing certificates were exfiltrated; however, the certificates were password-protected and we have no evidence of malicious use. As a preventative measure, we will revoke the exposed certificates used for the Atom application. Revoking these certificates will invalidate some versions of Atom.

These versions of Atom will stop working on February 2. To keep using Atom, users will need to download a previous Atom version.

1.63.1
1.63.0"
 
I really feel if they lowered the price to something like $35 far more people would buy it. I use it mostly as a copy/paste board for code and $90 (or whatever it is) is very steep for that functionality.

I concur. Sublime Text is priced as a full featured lightweight code editor. I'm never going to be using that to do development so it's a steep price for my use case of a quick editing board that'll be a quick code reader, regex testing board, or a place to format serialized text data for easier reading.

I still might be willing to do it if I were confident it'd be a continued product, but I posted a question to Mastodon and got a bunch of users saying Sublime Text seemed to be on its way to being abandonware.
 
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Sublime Text is priced as a full featured lightweight code editor. I'm never going to be using that to do development so it's a steep price for my use case of a quick editing board that'll be a quick code reader, regex testing board, or a place to format serialized text data for easier reading.
I use BBEdit for those types of tasks.
 
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OK, I know this post is over 7 months old, but how are you able to keep TextMate working on current versions of OS X? For me TextMate has been mostly unusable for a couple of years now due to conflicts with the OS making it super slow.

Late last year I finally came to terms that TextMate wasn't coming back and I had to find a new favorite text editor. So far I'm leaning toward SublimeText though I hear from longtime users that it's going the way of TextMate so I'm hesitating to go all in on it.
TextMate 2 has been working well for my needs and I haven't encountered any particular slowdowns. I'm currently running version 2.0.23 on a few different Intel and M1 Macs without any issues.

Your post did make me look into the development situation for TextMate and it's definitely depressing. Almost nothing has happened in the git repository for a few years now. So, it's probably only a matter of time before I need to find something new.

I don't really want or need a full IDE. I mainly write Python code for data analysis (I'm a researcher in academia) and small GUI programs, or in some cases Fortran code when better performance is needed. I value apps that "feel" like a real Mac app as aposed to cross-platform ones that don't really behave like I expect.

Two apps that come close to replacing TextMate for me are BBEdit and Visual Studio Code. BBEdit feels a lot like TextMate It's lightweight and a native app. It has most of the features I like in TextMate except for one big one, the multiple carets at arbitrary positions. BBEdit is a subscription app on the App Store but has a perpetual license available on their website. Visual Studio Code is an open source app from Microsoft. It's an Electron app though, so it doesn't feel entirely like a true Mac app. It works well and has a lot of features as well as an active community. To me it almost feels too feature rich, to the point of being intimidating for my needs, but a few of my coworkers use it and love it. This also comes with some bloat. Editing the same Fortran code in VS Code, BBEdit, and TextMate on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro running Ventura 13.2, I see TextMate using 86MB of memory, BBEdit using 106MB, and VS Code using 665MB. I'm not short on RAM, but it's worth pointing out.

In the end, I'm not sure what I'll do.
 
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Two apps that come close to replacing TextMate for me are BBEdit and Visual Studio Code.

I'm surprised that you haven't run into any issues with TextMate yet. In going through the MacroMates site, it seems pretty clear that a lot of people were having issues. I hope you stay lucky.

I feel emotionally attached to TextMate. We've been through a lot together. I think that's one factor keeping me from designating an alternate. There are plenty of other options out there and I'd easily get used to them with a little effort.

I'm amused that you decided to try Visual Studio Code as a replacement... and I actually did the same. I already have a preferred programming IDE, but I wanted to explore VSC so I could connect with the many other people who use it as their IDE. It was a nice idea, but Visual Studio Code is just way too heavy to be practical in such a role.
 
You might want to label TextMate to indicate that it appears to be abandoned. The not so latest version has issues with APFS file systems that makes it hang on startup.
According to whom? I run Textmate on Monterey with no problems.
 
You might want to label TextMate to indicate that it appears to be abandoned. The not so latest version has issues with APFS file systems that makes it hang on startup.
I don't beleive it's abandoned. I'm not a heavy user of the app, but I have noticed it doesn't get updated very often, but it still does.
 
I don't beleive it's abandoned. I'm not a heavy user of the app, but I have noticed it doesn't get updated very often, but it still does.

It's technically not abandoned, but there are critical bugs and it hasn't been updated in a long time.

According to whom? I run Textmate on Monterey with no problems.

Don't upgrade your OS then. I can't remember which version I started having problems on, but it's unusable for me. When the problems started, it was intermittent and mostly went away for one MacOS release, but as of Ventura it's unusable.

The author actually reports having problems too:
 
I'm surprised that you haven't run into any issues with TextMate yet. In going through the MacroMates site, it seems pretty clear that a lot of people were having issues. I hope you stay lucky.

I feel emotionally attached to TextMate. We've been through a lot together. I think that's one factor keeping me from designating an alternate. There are plenty of other options out there and I'd easily get used to them with a little effort.

I'm amused that you decided to try Visual Studio Code as a replacement... and I actually did the same. I already have a preferred programming IDE, but I wanted to explore VSC so I could connect with the many other people who use it as their IDE. It was a nice idea, but Visual Studio Code is just way too heavy to be practical in such a role.

This is about as slow as it ever starts up. This is on an M1 Mac mini just after booting. It takes a few seconds the first time but is fast thereafter.

 
This is about as slow as it ever starts up. This is on an M1 Mac mini just after booting. It takes a few seconds the first time but is fast thereafter.

Are you on Ventura? Up until Ventura it was intermittently frozen on launch for me, but since Ventura it freezes constantly.
 
Are you on Ventura? Up until Ventura it was intermittently frozen on launch for me, but since Ventura it freezes constantly.
Yes, 13.2. I recall the very first launch of the app taking a little while. It’s been like this since then though. Are you using TextMate 1 or 2?
 
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